London overground planners welcome completion of orbital route

10 December 2012

Academics from the UCL
Bartlett School of Planning have welcomed the completion of the final section
of London’s
orbital railway in south London, which they
first proposed in 1999 in a report commissioned by the London Development
Partnership.

Due to open on 9 December
2012, the London Overground orbital railway completes the circular rail system
that links London’s
suburbs. By completing the final section of track between Surrey Quays and
Clapham Junction previously unconnected areas are now served by an integrated
rail service with trains running directly from Highbury and Islington to
Clapham Junction.

The idea to connect existing
sections of London’s
rail to form the orbital route was first proposed in a report entitled London's spatial
economy: the dynamics of change by Professor Sir Peter Hall and Michael
Edwards from the UCL Bartlett School of Planning, in collaboration with an
independent planner, Drummond Robson. In the report the authors highlighted the
need for greater policy emphasis on the transport infrastructure of suburban London.

They proposed that
connecting the existing north London and east London lines with fragments of
rail in south London would offer a much quicker and affordable alternative to
building an entirely new track.

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Michael Edwards, one of the
authors from the UCL Bartlett School of Planning, said: “We concluded that the
suburbs of London
had the potential to contribute far more than they had been doing. However, one
of the huge problems in suburban London
was that the transport was very good if you were heading for central London,
but really badly designed for people who wanted to move from one suburb to
another.

"This needed to be made a lot easier, partly on economic grounds, and
partly on environmental grounds.”

The increased connectivity
combined with a stronger policy focus has already helped bring significant
regeneration benefits to areas such as Shepherd’s Bush and Clapham Junction
which are connected by the London Overground network.

Edwards added: “In this
report we were trying to emphasise the significance of London’s
economy outside of the centre.”